D&D 5E New player, questions about new edition

[Burnside]

Just wanted to echo those recommending Lost Mine of Phandelver as your first adventure to run - you already own it, as it’s included in the Starter Set.

 

[Nebulous]

This is what I needed to hear/read. I already knew it, but I second guess myself constantly. I can always play 5e and whatever 6e/5.5e/etc. ends up being called. I know I like 5e so why not play it?! Thanks for the nudge I needed.

Nothing is really ever obsolete. I have run adventures from the 1980s and adapted them to 5e. It's easy to do. All that changes are the stat blocks. The stories are the same. Everything is reusable, again and again.

 

[Nebulous]

I figured out the quotes!

Anyways, I recently saw a Curse of Strahd coffin shaped box at a gaming store. Can you please explain what this comes with? What is the benefit of buying it? Or is the book perfectly sufficient?

Btw, so far I have bought the Essential Kit, the Starter Kit, the Expanded Rules alt art set, and the Stranger Things Starter Kit. I have yet to play any of them though.

These responses are great, everyone! Thank you very much for the advice and information.

Sounds like you have the basics. Lost Mine is FANTASTIC. I have said this in the past, but it ranks up there in the top 5 adventurers of all time, in any edition of D&D. If you take Essentials and cherry pick it to add flavor and new encounters to Lost Mine, you will have a super robust adventure. If you want to add a full city adventure, like I mentioned, find a copy of Neverwinter from 4e. It is a great sourcebook and really fleshes out the area. Between all three, you will have more content than you know what to do. I ran Lost Mine twice. If you want to read some of adventures, I have them on my blog here. The first is the better one; it is blended with Essentials. We didn't finish it sadly though; Covid came and ruined everything.

Lost Mine of Phandelver (2019)

Lost Mine of Phandelver (5th edition D&D)

Starting in July 2014, Wizards of the Coast released the newest version of their classic roleplaying game, Dungeons & Dragons. I had not played in several years after getting burned out on the…

jmhauser.com

 

[aco175]

I would echo what some people have said and just get the 3 core books (players handbook, DMs Guide, and Monster Manual). You also have the Lost Mines Box and the Dragon of Icespire box as well. These are all you need for a while and maybe to the update depending on how much you play. You can expand these with homemade adventures after the 'official' module ends.

There is also a website called DMsGuild that people can sell adventures on and older books and adventures can be found from older editions. Some of the fan made adventures take place around the two box sets or other areas like in the city. Some of these are free or cheap enough to pick up for a few nights of play. There is also a few new player adventures if you look around.

You also have the big adventure books you can get for $50.00 that take PCs from like, levels 1-15 or something. These can be fine and help alot in planning or design if you are new to DMing the game. I only ran Princes of the Apocalypse (PotA) which I found fine and would recommend. I also have Tales of the Yawning Portal (TotYP) which I'm running the low-level adventures out of. These are updates to older edition adventures for 5e. I think here I wish I could only buy the first few since the last half of the book is just meh.

 

[Alby87]

I figured out the quotes!

Anyways, I recently saw a Curse of Strahd coffin shaped box at a gaming store. Can you please explain what this comes with? What is the benefit of buying it? Or is the book perfectly sufficient?

Btw, so far I have bought the Essential Kit, the Starter Kit, the Expanded Rules alt art set, and the Stranger Things Starter Kit. I have yet to play any of them though.

These responses are great, everyone! Thank you very much for the advice and information.

You have a lot of things to start:

1) Run a nice adventure using both the Starter set and the Essentials combined
2) Create your characters using the Basic Rules, the SRD and the Essentials rules booklet, and adding stuff from Xanathar, Tasha and Mordenkainen
3) Use the DM's rules in Xanathar and Tasha (some rules references to the DM's book you don't have, but for your style of play it may not be needed)
4) Create your adventures using the Basic rules and Mordenkainen Monsters.

What you don't have are:
1) Advanced creation rules (multiclassing, some classes, some high level spells, all the features)
2) Treasure from DMs book
3) Monsters from, well, monster book

If you want to run a higher level game but still you don't want to buy the entire trio, consider dndbeyond, where you can buy indivual spells, trasure and monster description. They aren't cheap if you buy them a lot, but if you are running something and need four or five of these things, it may be the right solution (probably this means running adventures from DMGuilds and not a book, as they really lean a lot on the core trio). Consider, if you want, to buy using the coupon inside the essentials kit the PHB on dndbeyond.

Then, if the game still pleases you, in 2024 there will be the new books available!

 

[Oofta]

You have quite a bit to get you started, I wouldn't worry about the anniversary edition. Even if you do end up buying more books (or just subscribe to DndBeyond) for a couple of years and end up replacing a couple of books, D&D can be an incredibly cheap hobby for the hours of enjoyment it will bring.

We really don't know what the anniversary edition will bring, I'm not even sure anyone at WOTC knows for certain. Even if it is substantially different, people will still be playing 5E for years to come. I suspect it will be a relatively minor change with tweaks because the game is still selling well and growing as far as we know. For example there was a new Monsters of the Multiverse book that came out that modified some of the monsters published after the original Monster Manual. They tweaked a few things, simplified some stuff, adjusted some things, but in play I doubt many people other than the DM would know which version was being used.

So take the plunge, use what you have now, and welcome to the hobby. [start slow chant "one of uss ... one of usss ..."]

 

[Blue]

Wizards has in multiple articles/interviews said that it will be compatible. They have used the term fully compatible as well but not as much.

Personally, I think we're seeing it already, just to the core books. To wit:

• The PHB races will be given the same sort of updates as the races reprinted in Monsters of the Multiverse - no age, no alignment, floating racial ability score modifiers, short rest moved to PROF per long rest, subrace getting broken out individually instead of under an umbrella, changes to what feature grants fey resistance to sleep, etc.
• Tasha's alternate or additional class features will become core.
• Monsters in the MM will be updated like MotM - less spells, more features that mimic spells, etc.

But all of that is my speculation. I beleive as "compatible" that it will play substantively the same, and few if any core mechanics will be changed.

 

[Endroren]

I know that no one knows for sure and this will all just be speculation, but do y'all think the 6e (or 5.5e, etc.) will be mostly made of slight tweaks to 5e instead of more of an entirely new edition? I've been lurking all day and it seems most think it'll just be incremental.

I ask because I began playing a couple of months ago and I love it. I tend to jump in head first when I find a new thing I really like so, of course, I'm looking to buy some books, but I don't want to invest much money into 5e books if they are just going to become outdated. I know that WotC says 6e will be backwards compatible, but I'm still kind of worried about it.

Jump in, have fun, buy as many books as you like, and don't worry about 6E. 6E won't be better - it'll just be different. As for the books you buy today, you can keep playing with just those for years to come. Plus there is a WEALTH of cool 5E compatible material from other creators, and most of them will keep putting that out long after 6E appears.

So my advice is don't give 6E a second thought, and go crazy with 5E!

 

[Charlaquin]

We don’t really know how much is going to change. WotC has said it will be compatible but that term might be getting used loosely. My guess would be that they mean characters made with the current rules will be fully playable under the new ruleset. But, regardless, two years is a long time to wait. I would just get the core books and maybe the starter set now.

 

[skintchicken]

What is a good site to order from online that supports more of a Mom and Pop store as opposed to the behemoths like Amazon?